


Children of Dust and Ashes

by just_another_classic



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Season 7 Spoilers, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:46:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_another_classic/pseuds/just_another_classic
Summary: After his memories return, Killian struggles to cope with the realization of everything and everyone he left behind. Comfort comes from an unlikely source. Golden Hook frenemyship (spoilers/speculation for S7)





	Children of Dust and Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> This one-shot definitely has spoilers and speculation for season 7. If you would like to avoid either, this is not the fic for you! Also, there are references to both CS and Rumbelle here.

The rum burns.

He'd forgotten that in the thirteen months he had been cursed. He'd forgotten the burn, the taste, his thirst for alcohol while cursed. Rogers had been a teetotaler, refusing anything that would alter his overly righteous state-of-mind. Rogers was a good cop, by the book, respectable. Everything that Killian Jones isn't, despite sharing a face and body for over a year.

Thirteen months.

His phone sits on the table. He watches it, waiting for it to buzz with a call or text from a faraway area code. It's well past midnight on the East Coast, and everyone who could call should be asleep. But it's been thirteen months. He'd read in the early months, sleep cycles would essentially be unreliable.  

("We'll both need caffeine IV drips," Emma had teased him, stealing the book he'd been poring over the the better part of two months.)

He wonders what she'd say now. He wonders everything about his wife and how she's been the past thirteen months since he made and broke a promise. He wants so badly for his phone to ring, to hear her voice, and to apologize for things both in his control and out of it. But she won’t call -- _can’t_ \-- the lingering magic somehow still serving to blockade the ability to communicate between here and Storybrooke. Killian can’t help but wonder if he had the ability to reach Emma, if she would want to hear his voice. He did, after all, fail her. But a part of him rather foolishly hopes that True Love will prevail and that his phone would alight, signalling that yes, maybe, she can forgive him for missing all of these months, magic and curses be damned.

Regret courses through his veins, far more potent than any spirit he could imbibe. Not that it stops him from drinking. He's holed up in a far corner of Robi's -- no, _Regina's_ \-- bar with the best bottle of rum he could pilfer. He'll pay her back for it later, not that he's really sure she cares. She's her own kind of muddled up, and the earlier sympathetic looks she's cast his way tells him that she won't press the issue.

But she's with her family now: Henry, Jacinda, and Lucy. Together. A family. They're plotting and planning ways to fully break the curse. They have their memories back, but Hyperion Heights remains a mystery -- one they can't leave. Outsiders can come and go, but not the ones trapped her by Tremaine's damned curse. Not for the first time in his life, Killian finds himself envying the former Evil Queen. Here she has her son. She can see for herself that he’s alright and be there for him if he needs it.  
  
Killian takes another long pull of the rum, hating himself in his resentment.  
  
He’s the one who talked her into going home. They’d quarreled over it, whether she should stay and help Henry. He knew then that she’d move heaven and earth for her boy, but he’d also known that she could still barely hold down food, and she was tired, always tired and weak. Emma had relented, eventually, after she’d been hurt in the attack, not enough to cause permanent damage, but enough to scare them both. And it had helped that Henry had been on his side.  
  
But as he sits alone in the empty bar, he can’t help but wonder how things would be if she had stayed. Emma had told him once that she had sometimes wished that her parents had not put her in the wardrobe, sending her away. “We would have been cursed, but at least we’d be together,” she had said. He’d reminded her then that if she hadn’t been cursed, then she wouldn’t have met Bae and had Henry, nor would their own relationship have been in the cards.  
  
Her words haunt him now. If his wife had come along, then she would have been cursed along with him, but she would have been _with_ him. He’d be able to hold her now. He would know if she was safe. He’d know if--

“I would say that I’m surprised to find you here, but then that would be a lie. You can’t take a pirate from his rum for too long.”

“What do you want, Crocodile?”  Killian raises his gaze to the man who suddenly appeared in the bar.  
  
The Dark One is once again dressed in his usual clothing -- a fine suit, well pressed, and not a wrinkle in sight. Under better circumstances, Killian would almost have laughed at the overall dishevelled appearance of the Crocodile’s cursed persona, so different than the man Killian had come to know and loathe over the course of three centuries. But things are different now, the curse and shifting of their lives taking a toll on them both. And, well, things had been different between Rogers and Weaver, not like their relationship back home.  
  
Gods, how he wishes to go home.

“Back to calling me the Crocodile, are we? Don’t wish to carry on our cursed friendship?”  
  
“And you do?” They had been cursed to be partners. Rogers had idolized Weaver, saw the other man both as a mentor or friend. They’d trusted one another, shared stories -- all the more proof that his life had been twisted by a dastardly curse. He could never -- _would_ never -- admire the Crocodile.  
  
“Not out of desire, but necessity,” the Dark One replies, “or did you forget, dearie, that we still have covers to uphold while trapped in this wretched place?”  
  
Ah, yes, that. They’re not sure if Tremaine and her wicked daughter know their memories have returned. Unwilling to show their hand too early, Regina had proposed carrying on with their cursed identities until they concocted a plan. Starting tomorrow, they would all go back to pretending they didn’t know who they once were. He was to act like nothing had changed, like he was the noble cop trying to do his best, like there wasn’t a family he had left behind.

“And tomorrow we shall once again be partners, but tonight, I’m drinking.” Killian makes a sure of taking a long drink from the bottle, hoping it will encourage Gold to leave and go back to whatever sewer from which he’d crawled. Try as he might, however, Killian still can’t shake the memories of actually enjoying his time spent with Weaver, and the thought of it feels like some twisted betrayal to Milah, forcing him to drink more, to numb himself to remorse slowly driving him insane.  
  
To his surprise, however, the Crocodile does not leave as he had wished. Instead, Gold moves to the spot opposite of where Killian is sitting. Killian watches in lazy interest as the Dark One conjures up a glass, and then a bottle of scotch.

“I didn’t ask for a drinking partner.”

“We can’t always get what we want,” Gold replies as he pours himself a glass, “and besides, I believe you and I can be of use to one another.”

“I doubt that.”

“Really?” Gold asks. His tone is challenging. “Because I believe we’re both desperate to get home to Storybrooke, far more desperate than anyone else here.”

Killian wants to argue. He wants few things more than to admit that the Crocodile is right. But it’s those few things that he wants more that drives him to listen. He knows better than the trust the man before him -- the real one, the one cursed with darkness by no longer with a fake life. Rogers may have thought highly of him, but Killian knows better. And yet, despite knowing this, he finds himself setting up a little straighter.

“Rarely does the two of us working together end well for me,” Killian says, memories of his heart in the Crocodile’s hand flashing through his mind, of Milah’s own heart being crushed.

“Somehow I doubt that will deter you.”

Killian remembers turning his ship around and allowing Emma and her family to board the ship. He’d let Gold walk the deck of the Jolly, let him stand where Milah had died and where his whole life had fallen apart. He’d made that decision in honor of Bae and because Emma somehow had convinced him that he could be better. In this moment, in this situation right now, he has to be better. If that means once again working with Gold, so be it. It’s not like he hasn’t done so over the past thirteen months. Finally, he replies, “No” and the Crocodile grins.

“Predictable as always.”  
  
Killian bristles at the comment, but tries his best to reign in his anger. If he’s going to get home, he will need his help. “So what’s your grand plan?”

“I’m developing one,” Gold replies, and it’s then that Killian realizes that his enemy doesn’t entirely have one. He feels sick at the thought, and to his surprise, the Crocodile mirrors his expression. “In the interim, I’ve put out a call for a quick background check on Belle, Gideon, and Emma.”

“You’re looking up Emma?”

“Consider it a sign of goodwill,” Gold answers, raising his glass. Killian feels a surge of hope, that maybe if he can’t speak to her that maybe the background check will show something. Suddenly, he’s very thankful for their cursed roles as law enforcement and the access it provides. “Finding birth certificates, of course, may be more complicated considering the time period and other matters at hand. I assume you know when your child was meant to be due.”

“July 12th,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper. It’s the first time speaking the words aloud since his memory had been unfogged. It’s now mid-February of the following year. Assuming everything went well, his and Emma’s child should be nearing seven months now. He doesn’t know its name, or its date of birth. He doesn’t even know if it is a boy or girl. He feels the burn of tears as he considers these things, but he wills them away. He will not cry in front of the Crocodile.  
  
Gold stays quiet opposite of him for a long while. Killian doesn’t look at him, instead staring off to some distant corner of the bar, wondering how his life had taken this turn. Was this centuries of bad deeds finally catching up with him, tormenting him in the worst ways? If so, why couldn’t it just be him that had to suffer? Why must it also be Emma and their child?

Early in their relationship, Emma had shared with him her past regarding Henry and his birth. She had told him how she’d been so alone and afraid, shackled to bed as she made the most difficult decision of her life. When they had first decided to start attempting to conceive, Killian had promised her that this time would be different. This time, she wouldn’t be alone. He would be there every step of the way.

And he failed.

“Yesterday was Gideon’s birthday.”

“What?” The Crocodile’s voice pulls him from his thoughts.

“Yesterday was my son’s birthday,” Gold says. He lifts his glass and gazes as the liquid, turning it ever so slowly. “I was not present at his birth, nor was I there for him yesterday.”

“And?” He will not allow himself to be compared to the Crocodile, the man who chose power over his own son, the one whose wife was so afraid, she begged both Killian and Emma to not allow him near. He’s better than that man. He left to help Henry, his family.  
  
But then again, so did the Dark One.  

“And it’s enough to drive a man to drink,” Gold replies, his tone clipped. “It’s a feeling I thought you would know all too well considering I found you here.”

“I’m a one-handed pirate with a drinking problem. I’m always here.” He means for his words to come out sarcastically, but they sound sad and pathetic to his ears. He sounds like did when he was Rogers, unveiling his insecurities to his partner who had been around the block before, who understood. But Gold is not Weaver, and he hates himself even more for this show of weakness.

“That’s not how my son saw you.”

“Your son’s a child.”

“I wasn’t talking about Gideon.”

Killian jerks his head toward Gold. Over the years, though relations between them have somewhat thawed, they rarely ever spoke of the past. It was necessarily, in Killian’s mind, in order to maintain what barely congenial interactions they did have between them. Milah and Bae, and the ways Killian had tormented Belle in the early years were unspoken facts between them. And now, already drowning in the guilt of failing the people he loved, he’s once again reminded of another person he’s wronged.

“I don’t know what Bae thought of me. We might have made some peace in the end, but much of our history wasn’t positive.”

“And yet it’s you who he trusted to save the two people he loved most in the world.” Killian raises an eyebrow in disbelieving interest. Gold continues, “Just who do you think sent the note encouraging you to go after them?”

“I--I didn’t know.”

“He did so knowing that it would likely drive the woman he loved into your arms,” Gold goes on to explain as Killian absorbs the weight of his words. “Do you honestly believe that he would have made such a decision if he believed you to be nothing more than a ‘one-handed pirate with a drinking problem’?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I can’t have you wallowing in self-pity while the two of us attempt to find out way home,” Gold replies. There’s something in his tone that suggests something more, and Killian wonders if Weaver is shining through. Was it David or Snow that told him that they had been both?

“Says the man who is also wallowing in self-pity right this moment,” he gestures toward the glass in front of Gold. “At any rate, rest assured that level of self-pity will stand between me and my goals. I did spend two centuries trying to hunt you down.”

“To which I remind you that you failed.”

“My priorities _shifted._ ”

“A fact of which we are all thankful. Even in self-defense I doubt Belle would have forgiven me for killing you. For reasons I still can’t fathom, she’s quite fond of you.” Killian can tell that bothers Gold -- that the man who ran away with his first wife is close friends with his second. He almost can’t believe it himself.

“She’d move past it. Belle has a kind heart and is exceedingly forgiving.”

“Too kind and too forgiving, perhaps,” Gold replies. Killian almost thinks it’s a pointed statement toward himself, but then he catches the Crocodile’s eye flick to the hand where his own ring should be. “It truly is her best feature.”

“Aye.” Sometimes, he’s astounded by his friendship with Belle. He’d been so terribly cruel to her in the beginning in his attempts to strip the Dark One of his happy ending. Years later, despite the apologies and mended bridges, it still makes him sick to recall how he’d treated her. He imagines the feeling is tenfold for the Crocodile.

“She wanted you and I to be friends, you know.”

Despite himself, Killian laughs. “Yes, well, proof enough that nobody’s perfect.”

“She’ll be so disappointed to discover that a curse did what she could not.”

“Maybe she will hope some of it sticks, aye?” For a moment, they are Rogers and Weaver again, two partners sharing their dark humor as an escape from the horrors of their chosen career path. It’s both familiar and unnerving. The thought, however, doesn’t stop him from saying, “Can you imagine the faces of everyone in Storybrooke, the two of us returning as bosom buddies? Emma’d haul me off to the cricket to check my sanity.”

“She’ll be more concerned introducing you to your child,” Gold says, sobering the conversation. “He or she will be starting to crawl around now, so you will be kept busy.”

Killian thinks the Crocodile means to be comforting, but the other man’s words feel like a punch in his gut. Years ago, the Dark One had told him that he wished he would suffer. Is this what he had meant? Not only losing Milah, but years later losing his own family. He can recall with distinct clarity the pain Milah had felt at being separated from Bae. He’d empathized then, but _gods_ he didn’t understand. Not like he does now as he wrestles with the “ _what-might-have-beens_ ” and wonders just how much he has missed.

The child he has now, the one at home whose name he doesn’t _bloody fucking know_ is at the age where he or she will be crawling. He doesn’t know their hair color, or the color of their eyes. Does his child have Emma’s coloring or his? What does his or her laugh sound like? What makes them laugh? He’s wondering all of these things, has been since the moment his memories had returned.

“Does it get better?” he asks suddenly, needing assurance, something -- _anything_ \-- to keep him from drowning furthering in his own self-loathing as he careens further and further toward the bottom of the glass bottle. Milah had never found that peace, all thanks to the man sitting across from him. But gods, he can’t think of that, not right now, no matter how much residual guilt he feels. He wishes her were talking to Dave, but David is not the one here. Screwing his eyes shut, Killian pretends that the man opposite is still Weaver, his mentor, his friend.

“Does what?”

“The guilt? The regret? You found Bae again, were able to raise Gideon again. Did you ever forgive yourself for everything you missed?” _Will I ever forgive myself for everything I’ve missed?_

“No,” Gold replies, providing Killian the answer he knew he would he receive but didn’t want. “The ones you love may forgive you. Your child is young enough to hardly notice your absence. But you never truly will.”

“Ah.”

“But, I’ve also learned over the centuries, that’s fatherhood. You will always wonder if you can do better, be better, all because you want a better life for them than you had.”

Killian thinks of his father, abandoning both he and Liam to the seas for his own pleasure. His father never returned, but Killian vows he would do the same. He will return, sweep Emma and their child into his arms and never leave. Not again. “In order for either of us to do that, we’ll have to get home.”

“Indeed.”

“So where do we begin?”


End file.
